Mennonites

The Mennonites are an Anabaptist Christian sect which was founded by Frisia preacher Menno Simons during the Reformation. An early set of Mennonite beliefs was codified in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith in 1632, but the various Mennonite communities do not hold to a common confession or creed, although they share a commitment to pacifism and believer's baptism. Most of the original Mennonites settled in Germany or Switzerland, but, starting in 1791, Mennonites from Danzig and West Prussia began to establish colonies in Ukraine. Catherine the Great invited Prussian Mennonites to farm the Ukrainian steppes depopulated by Tatar raids in exchange for religious freedom and military exemption, and the Mennonite farmers became very successful over the years. Between 1874 and 1880, 45,000 Mennonites left the Russian Empire, with 9,000 of them heading for the United States (mainly Kansas and Nebraska) and 7,000 for Canada (mainly Manitoba). During the Russian Civil War, Nestor Makhno's anarchists and the Bolsheviks targeted the privileged Mennonites, leading to further emigration; a wave of Mennonite emigration to the USA, Canada, and Paraguay ensued, and Canadian Mennonites started to migrate to Mexico and Paraguay during the 1920s. Soon, Mennonite communities formed in Brazil, Uruguay, Belize, Bolivia, and Argentina as well. During World War II, many Mennonites in the USSR accepted the German Wehrmacht as liberators and were accepted as Volksdeutsche, with many Mennonites fleeing alongside the German Army as the Soviets defeated the Germans on the battlefield. After the war, the Soviets sent several Mennonites to labor camps as punishment for their Nazi collaboration. In the 1990s, the governments of Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan gave Mennonites the opportunity to emigrate, with the majority of them moving to Latin America; tens of thousands settled in Germany and Canada. By 2015, the Mennonite world population was 2.1 million, and 735,000 lived in Africa, 672,000 in North America, 420,000 in Asia and the Pacific, 210,000 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 63,000 in Europe.